Point of Sale ("POS") printers are often utilized to print receipts as a result of a cash or credit card sale at a business. Such receipts are generally two to three and one-half inches in width providing for approximately 70-80 millimeters, or 40 characters, of available space for printing a line in portrait mode. The receipt may be produced from a roll of paper or fast fold papers. Portrait mode is a vertical print orientation in which a document is printed across the narrower dimension of the paper.
One concern regarding such POS printers is the footprint (i.e., the surface area occupied by a personal computer or peripheral device) of the printer, since counter space is typically at a premium at a cash register site. Thus, it is desirable that the footprint of a POS printer be as small as possible. Generally, this concern is satisfied because of the small size of the receipt primed from the POS printer. However, there is also often a desire to print on larger width documents, such as checks. To print on a check, a larger POS printer would be required.
To solve this problem, printing of a check may be done in landscape mode. Landscape mode is a horizontal print orientation in which text or images are printed "sideways." In contrast to portrait mode, landscape mode prints across the wider dimension of a rectangular sheet of paper. Traditionally, landscape mode printing is quite slow. For instance, the IBM Model 2 printer prints the front of checks (3 lines of print) in approximately 13 seconds by feeding the check through the document feed station and printing a rotated font. However, 13 seconds may be considered to be too long of a period of time to wait for the printing of the information on the check. The desire to check out as many customers as possible in a short period of time limits the mount of time for such landscape mode priming.
Furthermore, because of the limited counter space, it is not desirable to (1) replace the POS printer with a printer having a larger footprint and an ability to print in portrait mode on larger documents; or (2) install a second larger printer in addition to the POS printer for the receipts.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a printer that is capable of printing unit records in both portrait and landscape modes, wherein the printing of each unit record is performed in a relatively short time.